View allAll Photos Tagged metaphor
A metaphor for our fragile planet. Karl Sagan said: "We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you know, everyone you love, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish this pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
Physiognomy Experiment
2008-2010
Mixed Media
It is easy for many people to overlook or dismiss mental illness. In most cases, its symptoms are not visible in the outward appearance of an individual. These photographic works represent a physical manifestation of psychological or emotional pain.
Many members of my family have suffered from depression and anxiety. As a child, I watched my mother suffer from the symptoms associated with these ailments. I understand the pain and suffering that is endured, because I have experienced them first-hand. At times the symptoms of my own anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder have been crippling and life-altering. Through my own experience, I have developed a great empathy for those suffering from the affliction of all types of mental illness.
I began to research the history of treatment for mental illness. Many of which provided little or no relief for the patient, and on some occasions caused further pain and suffering. This installation uses complex electrical wiring and the application of light as a metaphor for the treatment of mental illness. The audience is invited to participate.
The invention of photography generated new interest in the idea that a person’s character could be determined by examination of their physical features, or outward appearance. Hugh Welch Diamond made photographs of mental patients in the Surrey County Asylum. Some of the photographs are particularly moving and served as inspiration for this piece. Diamond’s photographs were used to capture the physiognomy of the patient and were intended to aid in treatment. My photographs were made with a large-format view camera, in much the same way that Welch made his own photographs.
23 March 2013. WTC IND Station, NYC.
Mosaics of eyes watching you, all over the World Trade Center IND subway station in New York. The WTC area is one of the mostly densely surveiled places in the world.
(The mosaics are part of the "Oculus" subway art installation, by Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel, from 1998 - predating the post 9/11 surveillance mania.)
You'd think, seeing this ahead of me, I'd stop for a moment and check a weather report. Maybe grab some dinner and wait it out. But, noooo....
My investigation into lifestream. I discovered this 1996 dissertation paper from Yale, which talks about the idea from a book called Mirror Worlds, and make into reality as a desktop metaphor (do watch the quicktime video on the web page). I just realized how similar it is to a feature of Apple's latest Leopard OS called Time machine.
After seeing a presentation from visualization legend Robert Horn, I began to work harder to find the right metaphors to build ideas around. Here was the first one I produced for a client, which dramatically helped simplify a complex proposition. Some labels have been changed to protect the innocent :)
Definitions of flip book on the Web:
A flip book is a book with a series of pictures varying gradually from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate, simulating motion or some other change. Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings. Flip books are not always separate books, but may appear as an added feature in ordinary books or magazines, often in the page corners.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_book
#ds373 (contender) Go white on white today. Make a photograph of a white subject on a white background. (11/23/10)
hmm, it appears that all whites are not alike. i kind of liked this one because it looks like the hand is floating above the lace but went conventional.
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macromonday metaphor......... btb, this "hand" is actually really small maybe 3 inches long (2/14/11)
This is my photographic metaphor for what a winter in Galveston has done to my psyche.
On the sunless beaches of Galveston Texas.
This building was going to be Anglo Irish Bank's new headquarters. It's unlikely they'll be moving in now.
*Update 2nd-Sept 2010. Looks like it has finally got planning permission. Whether there's any money to complete it is another matter.
Created by Swedish artist Karl Momen in 1986, Metaphor, exhibits a 27m tall concrete "tree" with six spheres containing rocks and minerals native to Utah. A small, non-visible marker contains the words from Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy". Unfortunately for Metaphor, its location in the middle of the Boonville Salt Flats with no easy stopovers causes confusion to most passing by, many thinking that it is just a communications tower of some type. The fence was recently erected to prevent tiles from falling on visitors.
Wendover, Utah
It's difficult to convey how vexing this app is without actually showing it in action. All the same, I can't recall the last time I encountered a UI that was so full of inappropriate metaphors, unexpected behavior, and unclear information.
Where should we start? OK, how about that stickshift control. Seems straightforward at first...until you start thinking about those icons. What exactly do they mean? I *think* that the aircraft icon means "High performance", but what does the walking person mean in relation to the aircraft? And "Auto"? Does the ordering of the detents reflect in increase in performance from left to right? Right to left? If not, why use a shifter-and-slot metaphor?
Now let's talk about the interaction: Why did ASUS go to the trouble of making the user *drag* a faux stickshift in a slot in the first place? A horizontal click-and-drag isn't exactly the easiest motion in the world. I'd like to watch a person with motor disabilities try to drag it.
Then there's the radial graph thingy on the right....really? If you could see it change when you dragged the stickshift, you'd immediately notice that It's not easy to discriminate between different states. Call me old-fashioned, but why not a line or bar graph? Conclusion: someone in Taiwan got a little carried away with the Photoshop...remember designers, just because you *can* doesn't mean you should.
And those four larger icons up top? I bet you think you can click them. Psych! You can't. They're just kinda there for show or something. Unless I haven't yet figured out how to make them work. Which is a distinct possibility, given my experience with this little piece of bad UX.
(This is the only un-processed pic on this website)
I went with a few Ukraine friends to Beuel, a small city close to cologne, for some campfire and nature. The most exciting thing though is the meteor shower. Under the influence of various dramas I watched as a teenager, I always thought it's one of the most romantic thing to do. But since I have got a pretty bad myopia and I have not been outdoor that much during nights, I have seen shooting star only once, in my entire life. Also sadly I never watched meteor shower with a lover before either, for various reasons. So I believe it's one of the hardest things in the world to see a meteor shower, or even a shooting star.
I lay on the grass for 1 hours waiting for my beautiful meteor shower. My companions saw more than 8 shooting stars, yet I hadn't seen any! I got pissed.
' Why is it that I can't see any while you keep on spotting them?!!'
' You have to look loosely at the sky, and do nothing but to enjoy it. If you keep busy checking your iphone app for the star map and focusing on a particular one, of course you will miss it.
It's not that difficult. It's all in your minds.'
Then I saw it. I saw five!! Well it's nothing so shockingly beautiful; it's rather ephemeral. We did not manage to see the meteor shower either. But being surrounded by nice people and warm fire, it's cozy and romantic enough.
When you think of love, friendship, or other sacred and far-reaching things like goals of life, they do sound like shooting stars. -Seriously, when you try to perceive it you can not even materialize it - just like the fact that I can't capture stars with my camera. If you focus on the highest goals or the hottest girls/guys (aka. brightest stars), you miss even more beautiful things. The really meaningful things are actually quite approachable, as common as an old shoe.
You see, life is like the ping-pong ball, and I am the paddle who spanks it. Or is that just your mom I spank? Oh!
Dec 05
I used self-reflection in this one because there is no mirror so it is not a literal reflection. This one is supposed to represent the harmful effects nicotine has on the body. It is my hand holding the Puff Bar and the shadow is supposed to look like a gun. I have seen this with a cigarette before, but now that my generation mainly uses vape, I wanted to make it more modern. This could be a literal and conceptual approach. It is more a self-reflection on how nicotine could kill you if not used with caution. I think I was successful but the poster in the back might come off as distracting. The lighting is artificial indirect CF.